In their first appearance before Congress since the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the nation’s top military leaders candidly admitted to lawmakers that they had recommended to President Joe Biden that the U.S. should keep a troop presence there, appearing to contradict his assertions.
The testimony by Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, was at odds with Biden’s comments earlier this year to ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that his military commanders did not recommend keeping a residual force.
The revelations came during a six-hour hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee where Milley also characterized that the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had been “a strategic failure” and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin acknowledged that it was time to acknowledged some “uncomfortable truths” about the two decade U.S. military mission in Afghanistan.
-ABC News